In Her Own Words: A Young Tanzanian Woman Working Towards Success
This post is part of our month-long series featuring Greatest Women of the Day, in recognition of Women's History Month.
To nominate a Greatest Woman of the Day, e-mail Impact@huffingtonpost.com.
This month, we're covering women making change -- big and small -- around the world. Today, in partnership with She's The First, we're featuring a letter from a young Tanzanian woman, Elizabeth David. Below, she shares her story, goals and role models.
I'm Elizabeth David. I'm 19 years old and I live in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. I study at Arusha Secondary School, which is a boarding school. I'm in my last year of advanced level (A-level), and I take three main subjects, which are history, geography, and economics, and also two subsidiaries, which are basic applied mathematics and general studies. My goals are to be a successful businesswoman in 10 years and to help Tanzanian women in any way I can.
In my first year of A-level at Arusha Secondary, I joined the Kisa Project. It's a project which deals with providing leadership education to girls in Tanzania. In Kisa, we did different projects like teaching computer at our school. Also, we had a leadership summit of 10 days in which we got many guest speakers from different places and occupations. Some were women lawyers and
successful businesswomen and leaders. They inspired me a lot and made me realize that I want to be a role model to my fellow African women and girls and also help them in any way I can.
In Women's History Month, there are a lot of women who inspire me to reach this goal and overcome any obstacle that I may face. One of them is my mom, Mrs. Suzan Samson. I admire the courage she has shown in raising me and my two elder sisters, making sure that my sisters get a good education and go to university. She has always shown herself to be a strong, tolerant, loving woman who is always ready to help others in need, even if she doesn't have much herself. Also, I learn from Oprah Winfrey, she had passed through a lot of hardships in life but turned out to be a very successful woman. And Dr. Anna Makinda, my fellow Tanzanian who is the first woman to be a parliament speaker in our country.
Tanzanian women are very hardworking women. They struggle a lot so that their children won't starve or not get education. Although to some extent men still see them as inferior, nowadays the women don't care about it anymore. Instead, they put extra efforts, and they end up proving the men wrong. A lot of Tanzanian women who were just housewives decide to get out of their houses and start their own small businesses -- from them they have succeeded to build their own houses, put the kids in school, and cover other daily house expenses. So I might say that Tanzanian women are very strong, tolerant and courageous.
Love,
Elizabeth
Elizabeth David is a scholar of the Kisa Project, a program run by the Colorado-based not-for-profit AfricAid. You can support She's the First's mission by contributing to the sponsorship of a girl in the Kisa Project.
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The Huffington Post First Posted: 03/18/11 06:14 PM ET Updated: 05/25/11 07:40 PM ET